Online Learning Update

October 14, 2014

XPrize focuses on open adaptive learning, but will it succeed or fail?

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:06 am

By Julia Freeland, eCampusNews

The Global Learning XPrize is aiming to spur the design of software that can serve students in as direct, unmediated manner as possible. The goal: to handsomely reward the team that develops the best open source, scalable adaptive software to help children in developing countries teach themselves basic literacy and math. As I’ve written about before, prizes are effective pull mechanisms to expedite R&D across a field and to in turn fill a gap that the market is currently failing to supply at scale. Unlike so-called push mechanisms that reduce the cost of R&D by directly funding research upfront, pull mechanisms incentivize private sector engagement and competition by creating viable market demand for specific products to solve specific problems. The XPrize is a good example of a pull mechanism, as are government Challenge Grants and social impact bonds.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/xprize-succeed-fail-423/

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